Victorian London: Mapping the Emergence of the Modern Art Gallery: Pamela M. Fletcher

Gainsborough Gallery

The Gainsborough Gallery was an exhibition space available for rent. The Punch caricaturist Harry Furniss devoted a chapter of his memoir to his “Artistic Joke,” an exhibition of painted parodies of the works of famous contemporary artists that he held at the Gainsborough in 1887. He notes that he made “arrangements for the hire of a gallery” and that “[t]he local habitation for my Exhibition, which upon the spur of the moment I was fortunate enough to find in Bond Street, was called for some inexplicable reason the Gainsborough Gallery.” (12) A notice in the Times in 1891 advertised “The Gainsborough Gallery, 25, Old Bond-street, for occasional purposes or for a term. Apply to Brice and Sons, Billiard Table Builders, 16 Soho-square.” (20 June 1891, 1)

Address: 25 Old Bond St

Start Date: by 1887

End Date: at least 1892

Selected exhibitions

Harry Furniss’s Royal Academy, an artistic joke (1887) [NAL]

“Nightmare” by Luis Falero (1888) [Saturday Review, 9 June 1888, 691]

The Paintings of Mr. Pertuiset, the lion-slayer (1889) [NAL]

“May Morning, Magdalen Tower, Oxford”; painted by W. Holman Hunt [Times, 20 June 1891, 1.] [NAL]

Exhibition catalogues: National Art Library, London (1887, 1889)

Sources

Furniss, Harry. Confessions of a Caricaturist. Volume 2. New York and London: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 1902.

Unless otherwise noted, the documentation of a gallery’s start and end dates at a location is drawn from listings in The Year’s Art.